Dublin, Ireland

A few nights ago, Jennifer and I returned from our final holiday journeys. Dublin was wonderful--relaxed and quaint for a large city. Our flight was scheduled in the wee hours of the morning. For those who aren't familiar with the procedure of catching a flight, you need to be there at least two hours in advance. For a six o'clock flight, this meant leaving Oxford to catch our bus at 1. Apparently, we had a high opinion of our bodies' capabilities and opted not to sleep beforehand. Not smart. When we arrived in Dublin, it was around 8 in the morning, and we had only a couple of hours of sleep scattered between our bus ride and flight. Our fatigue took awhile to hit, and we managed to do quite a bit before passing out in St. Patrick's park for a quick power nap. We first dropped our luggage in at our hostel, but it wasn't check in time, so we didn't get our room assignments or anything. From our hostel, we first ventured to Dublin Castle. Our map was horrible and didn't name major streets, but we managed to run into the castle. Connected to the castle is the Chester Beatty library, and we went there first. The Chester Beatty library has a nice collection of Oriental art, but most of it was being restored or something...I'm not sure. It wasn't available. They did, however, have a really neat exhibit about the world religions. The section on Christianity took up the majority of the exhibit, and there were several ancient manuscripts of the four gospels. I think I've learned as much during travelling as I did last term. All of the cities we visited were full of things you learn in school. It's been neat actually seeing them.

After leaving the Chester Beatty Library, we went to the castle which cost 4 euros or so for a guided tour. We decided against the tour, but there was an Andy Warhol exhibit beside the foyer that was free to explore. I found it funny that they weren't really watching the art, and it make me think of this book I had just read, Stealing the Scream. The book is about how it's easier to steal art than it is something from a department store.

Dublin Castle is in the medieval district of Dublin and near the two large churches, Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. We walked past Christ Church, admiring it and taking pictures. Then, we walked to St. Patrick's. St. Patrick's is full of Irish history, plus it's named after their famous holiday, so we forked over the 5 euros to go inside. We saw the grave of Jonathan Swift and other typical church things...we've seen so many they begin to run together. After our self-guided tour, we walked to the nearby park and rejuvenated in the grass. We napped for at least an hour. I just passed out lying on my stomach, and I woke up to the sound of a dog breathing really hard. Sure enough, there was a dog nearby, and some punk kids who asked Jennifer for a fag (cigarette).

After our nap, we walked to Temple Bar which isn't a bar at all. It's the artsy district where there are cool thrift shops, the film and photography institutes, and lots of pubs. We didn't buy anything, and walked through to St. Stephen's Green, another park. We ate pizza there and walked around. Parks in Ireland are much better than the ones in London as there was plant life other than grass and trees. It was really beautiful, but there were all of these couples who were lying in the grass together really going at it.

We next walked to Merrion Square which also had a park. Merrion Square was were Oscar Wilde lived, and like every other good college student, I have recently joined the Oscar Wilde cult. We saw a sculpture of him looking very flamboyant. I posed next to it of course.

The last thing we did was go to the U2 wall. I had no idea what it was, but I love U2, so I thought it could be interesting. Our map was failing us, and we had difficulty finding it. The Irish were so friendly, one man who we asked for directions offered to give us a ride to the U2 wall. I was tempted to accept because my feet hurt so bad from all the walking.Don't worry, we learned in kindergarten not to take rides from strangers. He wasn't creepy though. He had an ice cream cone. When we found the U2 wall, it was not what we were expecting. It was kinda lame actually. It was their old studio which had a massive amount of graffiti all on the building.

Unimpressed, we went back to our hostel to check in and take another power nap. We planned on going back out to experience Dublin's nightlife, but we just passed out. I fell asleep in my clothes and slept soundly.

The next day was more relaxing. We had time to take it easy since we had accomplished so much the first day. We went back to Temple Bar to shop around since we both wanted souvenirs. We didn't find anything, but we did go to the Handel Messiah festival. We saw Messiah performed on the streets by a choir and orchestra which was amazing. We also went to the photography gallery. The best thing about the photography gallery were these coupons for Subway that were lying around. So after the gallery, we ate lunch at Subway.

We later went to Trinity College. Apparently the night before, Bill O'Reilly had spoken and there were posters of him everywhere which Jenn and I found hilarious. I took a couple of posters of the bulletin boards. The posters seemed to make fun of him, so we couldn't understand why he would want to speak at a place where people aren't going to like him. One of the posters said "Americans will respect your views if you just keep the private." Also on Trinity College campus, I saw my first cricket match! And I couldn't understand a thing! It seemed like they stand around a lot.

We finished our second day going to an Irish pub for some traditional Irish food. We went to bed early again. The people in our rooms probably thought we were huge losers as they were just going out as were going to bed. Oh well. We had a flight to catch to Paris.